This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.

LAILA MAJNU(1953) was produced by P N Arora under the banner of All India Pictures and directed by K Amarnath. The star cast included Shammi Kapoor, Nutan, Ulhas, Begum Para, Wasti, Kammo, Ratan Kumar etc. All the songs of this film were penned by Shakeel Badayuni. However, the film had two music directors – Ghulam Mohammed (11 songs) and Sardar Malik (3 songs).Read more on this topic…

This song is a wonderful example of the fact that Bollywood those days possessed an embarrassment of riches in music. Besides the big name music directors, there were music directors on the fringes who were capable of creating great music as well. C Arjun was one of the lesser names from those days, who was mostly confined to working in low budget movies. But he has still given us some very memorable songs.

Here is a song composed by C Arjun that I was just not aware of. And this song comes as a pleasant surprise. This song is a superb ghazal that is sung by Rafi and Talat Mehmood. The song is written by Jaan Nissar Akhtar.

This gem of a composition is from an obscure movie called “Sushilaa” (1966). There is hardly any information avalable about this movie, but what music this movie contained ! Considering that this song came in 1966, this has to be one the last songs sung by Talat Mehmood for a movie. 1966 was a time when old order was about to change giving way to the new, and this song is very much a song of the old order.

I have posted a few songs from ‘Baabul” (1950) already. Al these songs were (and still are) very popular. But one of the most popular (and as yet unposted) song from this movie is the iconic song “chhod baabul ka ghar mohe pi ke nagar aaj jaana padaa”.Read more on this topic…

I had once mentioned that the version of song seen in the movie and heard in the records was often different because they were recorded on two separate occassions. Imagine a great song being recorded not once but twice ! Once for the movie sound track, and once for the record company.Read more on this topic…